CEPP Meeting Minutes
7 October 2026, 15:10–16:10 @CIS 265
CEPP Members Present: Adrian Bautista (DoS/VPSA), Yelena Biberman (Faculty), Kim Frederick (Faculty), Ryan Richard Overbey (Chair), Javier Perez-Moreno (Faculty), Kelly Sheppard (Assessment), Kate Sterling (SGA VPAA), Natalie Taylor (Interim DoF/VPAA), Leo Thomson (SGA)
CEPP Members Absent: David Howson (Faculty)
Attendees: Jamin Totino (Associate Dean of Student Affairs, The Learning Commons)
Guests: Marc C. Conner (President)
Scribe: Javier Perez-Moreno
Meeting Items
- Introductions
We introduced each other.
- Approve minutes from 2026-09-23
Minutes were approved.
- Announcements and updates
Chair posted the AI policy on the CEPP website and this year’s CEPP subcommittees.
- CEPP is bringing motion on London FYE at the 9 October faculty meeting.
- Be prepared to answer questions as the motion comes to the faculty.
- Mission Statement [Marc C. Conner]
(First time that President Conner meets with CEPP). Perfect timing to discuss the Mission Statement, as CEPP is working on the GSLD.
President Conner shared 3 drafts of “The Skidmore Mission Statement” for consideration, as well as a set of Skidmore’s Guiding Principles. The committee was asked to team in groups of two, read the document and provide two things we liked, two things we found interesting, and two things we would like to change.
This led to a robust conversation steered by President Conner, who took the feedback for consideration.
President Conner anticipates to get the Mission Statement ready by the end of this semester, which will be helpful for the development of the GSLD by CEPP.
- Results from Writing Assessment [Kelly Sheppard]
Over 90% of students fulfill the Expository Writing requirement through English Department courses. As the requirement was a holdover from the previous All College Curriculum, no criteria were developed. Luckily, the English Department developed their own learning criteria to assess Expository Writing and have a dedicated committee. CEPP should establish assessment criteria before the next assessment.
Fewer student essays were assessed than what initially was expected, which made demographic analysis difficult. Analyzing more papers for this assessment would require the College to invest more resources to properly compensate the assessment team.
Overall, students did well but with room to grow in their writing development, expected given it is followed by writing development in the major. The assessment indicates that Expository Writing is currently achieving its goal.
First-generation are doing as well as their peers. Students, domestic and international, for whom English was not their first language did well. There were some questions about self-placement into EN103 by those students when it might not be necessary.
For the demographic data, we noted that IPEDS collected gender information (men/women) with reporting options for students identifying with another gender or those whose gender was unknown. Going forward, IPEDS shifted to reporting sex (male/female) and discontinued the optional additional categories, consistent with the policy changes of the current administration.
No correlation with the Admission’s Academic Quality Rating (different than the AQR requirement) and Expository Writing was found.
Overall consensus in CEPP was that English is doing great work with Expository Writing, especially with respect to first-generation outcomes.